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COFYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



LUMINOUS BODIES 
HERE AND HEREAFTER 

(THE SHINING ONES.) 



Being an Attempt to Explain the Interrelation of the 

Intellectual, Celestial and Terrestial Kingdoms, 

and of Man to His Maker 



BY CHARLES HALLOCK, M. A. 
Member of Washington Biological Society. 



New York 
The Metaphysical Publishing Co, 

500 Fifth Avenue 



B3^ ca 



LIBRARY of CONGRES 

Two Cooies Received 

MAY 19 J 906 

Copyright Entry 

CLASS fit XXC. No 

COPY % 2 



Copyright 190S 

by 

CHARLES HALLOCK 



LUMINOUS BODIES HERE AND 
HEREAFTER 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. INVOCATION ii 

II. L'ENVOY 15 

III. BIOLOGY OF THE COSMOS 19 

IV. VITO-MAGNETISM AND THE SOUL-AURA 27 
V. COLOR EFFECTS OF THE EMOTIONS.... 39 

VI. ELECTRICAL BODY OF THE FUTURE 

LIFE , 45 

VII. THE SUPREME SOURCE AND ITS PO- 
TENTIAL AGENT 57 

VIII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETERNAL FELIC- 
ITY , 67 

IX. THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 73 

X. THE UNITED PHILOSOPHIES.-. 79 

XI. EVOLUTION AND THE FUTURE LIFE... 85 

XII. CREDO: "ONLY BELIEVE" 93 

XIII. ANTIPHONE: MAN TO HIS MAKER 99 

XIV. APPENDIX: VIEWS AND OPINIONS 103 



I 

INVOCATION 



Chapter I. 
INVOCATION. 

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 
What gives the mind its latent strength to scan, 
And chains brute instinct at the feet of man — 
Bids the wild comet, in its path of flame, 
Compute its periods and declare its name — 
With deathless radiance decks historic page, 
And wakes the treasures of a buried age? 
Majestic science from his cloistered shrine, 
Heard, and replied — "this godlike power is mine." 
"Oh, then," said man, "my troubled spirit lead, 
Which feels its weakness and deplores its need. 
Come and the shadowy vale of death illume, 
Show sin a pardon, and disarm the tomb." 
High o'er his ponderous tomes his hand he raised, 
His proud brow kindling as the suppliant gazed 
"With ignorance I war and hoary time, 
Who wreck with vandal rage my works sublime — 
What can I more ? Dismiss your idle pain, 
Your search is fruitless and your labor vain." 
But from the cell where long she dwelt apart, 
Her silent temple in the contrite heart, 
Religion came, and where proud science failed, 
She bent her knee to earth, and with her sire 
prevailed. Sigourney. 

ii 



II 

L'ENVOY 



Chapter II. 
L'ENVOY. 

My thesis is built upon Dr. Henry Raymond Roger's 
"Theory of the Great Physical Forces," elucidated by 
Sir Oliver Lodge's "Corpuscle Theory of the Uni- 
verse." It is an attempt to explain the inter-relation 
of the Terrestial, Celestial and Intellectual Kingdoms, 
and Man's Oneness with His Maker. 

The success of the essay does not by any means 
depend upon establishing its hypotheses, but rather 
upon reconciling the divine with the human by leading 
man to recognize the eternal harmony between all 
things existing. Intrinsically it is written in the spirit 
of the "Lay Church," whose object as pronounced is 
to bring to life religious forces which now lie dor- 
mant, to define a common ground which will satisfy all 
creeds, and to awaken such an interest in the life 
to come as will stimulate an effort for righteousness 
which will pass current hereafter. 

My view of the future life deprecates any doctrine 
of carnal or material limitations. I consider all argu- 
ments against immortality as narrow, abject, and 
founded on sensuous auto-suggestion which is a fun- 
goid growth from a mentally morbid state. Pseudo 
philosophers ignore the truth, while assuming to be in 
search of the truth. They are playing at blind man's 



16 LUMINOUS BODIES 

buff. Whosoever spurns the Scriptures as "folk-lore" 
and fable, shuts off testimony which cannot be obtained 
elsewhere. "The testimony of the Lord is sure, and 
giveth wisdom to the simple." Psalms. 

The hypothesis of an electrical soul envelope in the 
future existence is original with me as far as I know. 
I claim discovery of the new thought. The proposition 
is bold ; for who can penetrate the veil ? It can, in the 
nature of man's relation to his Maker, be no more 
than a suggestion. I present it according to the light 
I have gathered from the discoveries of science and 
the declarations of Holy Writ. Some chapters have 
appeared during the past seven years in the Open 
Court, the Wiseman and in the Menorah Monthly, and 
been favorably received and discussed. 1 certainly 
could never have accomplished such a profound intro- 
spection without spiritual light and Biblical reference. 
Thereby, I have been able to write intelligently and 
plausibly, "not as a scribe, but as one having authority." 



Ill 

BIOLOGY OF THE COSMOS 



Chapter III. 
BIOLOGY OF THE COSMOS. 

The motion of the heavens is in the universe of 
corporeal things as the motion of the heart is in 
an animal, by which the life is preserved. Like- 
wise there is in the relation which any sort of motion 
in Nature bears to natural objects a certain resem- 
blance to vital operation. Whence if the v/hole cor- 
poreal universe were one animal, so that this motion 
were intrinsically derived from that which moves, as 
some suppose (this was the opinion of Pythagoras 
and particularly of Zeno, who defined the world as 
a spherical animal swimming in a vacuum), it would 
follow that motion was the life of all natural bodies. 
— St. Thomas of Aquin {13th Century) in his 
Summa Theologica, First Book, first part, question 
xviii, article 1, answer to first objection. 

The subtile principle of life pervades the Universe. 
It permeates its comminuted parts as well as the inte- 
gral whole. It pertains no less to the incipient spore 
than to the mature and ultimately developed growth. 
It is manifest in all organic matter, whether it be of 
plant or animal, from the so-called protoplasm to super- 
lative man. 

Primarily the Earth was a chaotic embryo, or cell, 
without form and void, like all other protoplasmic 
germs. Invested with the principle of life, it became 
a World. By the same creative agency, Man was 
formed of the cosmic dust; and after he had likewise 
received the breath of life, he became "a living soul." 

19 



20 LUMINOUS BODIES 

All cosmic material is identical whether it be in the 
form of animals, plants or stones. No matter what 
metamorphosis matter may take, or however it may- 
disintegrate or decay, the inherent principle of life 
remains undisturbed, and will continue and proceed. 
Wherefore there is substantially no death; that is, no 
literal ceasing to exist, and there never can be, for 
death is merely an incident to a metamorphosis. In- 
trinsically, it is a temporary suspension of animation. 

Unity in nature is everywhere apparent. The prim- 
ordial unit, as well as its parts, parasites, projections, 
and emanations, are all alike subject to the same 
courses and the same destiny. All are involved in a 
common fate. Ultimately they will be changed. This is 
the universal testimony throughout all the ages. Bibli- 
cal cosmogony teaches it, and the proposition involves 
its own solution. There is no incoherency in the plan of 
creation. There is a manifest oneness of purpose, one 
entity, one systematic design, and one uniform ten- 
dency. Logically, if all created things are "of the earth, 
earthy," and the principle of life imbues all, the Cosmos 
itself is as much an organic entity as any living thing 
within it or of it, and we may as properly speak of the 
biology of the Earth as of the biology of Man, out of 
whose dust he was formed. Recognizing our kinship 
with Mother Earth, of which the psalmists and poets 
have so much delighted to speak, we practically admit 
homogeneity of substance — a conclusion which enables 
us not only to reconcile Biblical testimony with modern 
science, but to show that it is right in line with scientific 
evidence. 

The tendency of the human mind has alwavs been, 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 21 

from earliest historical time, toward a recognition of a 
terrestrial personality. At one period, Cosmolatry or 
Earth worship was widely prevalent. Not only were 
human but divine attributes ascribed to the Cosmos, 
and men even went so far as to sacrifice their own kin- 
dred as propitiatory offerings to it. The personification 
of the Earth and its most attractive objects, have af- 
forded a constant theme for poets and inspired writers, 
who never tire of allegorical reference to the relation- 
ship of mankind to it and them. The sublimest lan- 
guage of the Psalms is embodied in an apostrophe to 
the hills and mountains, and an adjuration to lift up 
their hands in praise of their Creator. 

Genesis affords a concise, though graphic sketch of 
the evolution of the Earth from its protoplasmic state 
throughout its six first great formative epochs. The 
developments which have since taken place to bring it 
to its present perfection of fitness and beauty, have 
been remarkable, and startling phenomena have come 
even within the range of recent history. Scripture tra- 
dition says it was originally "without form and void." 
The ancient Greeks, who seem to have had about as 
clear and correct a conception of inscrutable things as 
modern scientists have, described it as "an egg floating 
in the sea of chaos." In India, China and Egypt, as 
well as in Greece, this cosmical egg (cell) was ever 
prominent in architecture as symbolic of Creation. And 
what physicists of any age or epoch, inspired or other- 
wise, we may ask, have ever come nearer the truth? 
that is, if analogies in nature are to hold good through- 
out the entire universe. 

Some eight years ago, the Biological Society of 



22 LUMINOUS BODIES 

Washington listened to a lecture by Professor Seaman, 
which illustrated in a most impressive way what might 
be called "the principle of life." In the searching light 
of the stereopticon we discovered an illuminated field 
animate with marine protozoic cells, floating as it were 
in "a sea of chaos," singly, in groups, in clusters, in 
constellations. Imagination pictured each living germ 
ablaze with phosphorescence, and the eye cast heaven- 
ward, perceived them all reflected in the firmament 
above! Venus, a shining world like ours, the earth 
itself, Orion, the Pleiades, and the nebulous Milky-way, 
star answering star as face answers face in a mirror; 
some of them revolving compactly around a central 
orb, some drifting away in scattered and erratic courses, 
like comets, and all attracted or repelled by some great 
controlling influence toward' or from each other, with 
the great majority, in constant motion, changing form 
as well as place. And the intent observer of protozoic 
life, watching patiently and closely, and permitting no 
iota of each life history to lapse from view, discovers 
here and there upon the microscopic field some pro- 
toplasmic cell, egg-shaped like the earth, putting forth 
projections from its pulsating selvedges in the primal 
efforts of development. After a period corrugations 
appear upon its surfaces. Later on a muscle is devel- 
oped in one part, and otherwhere a rib. Organs begin 
to be defined and functions are set in motion. In the 
course of time exquisite transformations are unfolded 
and results appear which the wisdom of mundane sages 
cannot comprehend or interpret. Just so the cosmical 
cell, which was at first without form and void, and 
erstwhile floating in the sea of chaos, with innumerable 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 23 

other stellar cells and incipient worlds like it, gradually 
developed by successive stages into a world of beauty, 
and becomes a terrestrial physicosm. 

Biology discovers that it is difficult to draw the line 
between the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, so inti- 
mately do they blend. Equally difficult is the demarca- 
tion between the human and the brute creation; and 
there are scripts in sacred history which bear witness 
to the intussusception of the human and divine, in 
Christ. Is it not possible to go lower as well as higher 
and find a composite between the organic and inor- 
ganic? What defines or separates the two? What dif- 
ferentiates inert matter from the sentient? Scripture 
calls this what the "breath of life." A corpse is dead 
matter which, decaying, goes to dust. Vivified it is a 
living creature? What are the evidences of life? Why, 
palpable inherent heat and pulsation? Then, behold 
them present in our Physicosm ! for cosmic physiology 
discovers at the equator the plexus of a great circula- 
tory system, whose pulsations are as regular as the 
human heart-beat, with the warm arterial current flow- 
ing outward to its polar extremities, and the colder 
venous currents returning with the same steadfast uni- 
formity from the antipodes; the swell of the ocean 
conforming to the pulsation of the tides like the heaving 
of the human bosom in respiration. The cosmic heart 
has two auricles and two distinct arterial currents, the 
gulf stream and the Kurosiwa ; and these arterial cur- 
rents and all the arctic counter currents are operated 
upon by influences which cause variations of tempera- 
ture at the center and extremities, just as in the human 
body ; and when the circulation is deranged the whole 



*4 LUMINOUS BODIES 

body suffers. The Cosmos has the same proportions 
of water as the human body and the same proportions 
of organic matter ; which comprises the same chemical 
constituents, salts, phosphates, etc. The earth has cor- 
responding organs and functions and is subject to like 
corporeal disorders. It has lungs, bowels, nerve cen- 
ters, and secretory glands, with bladders, sacs and 
pockets to retain the fluids, and vents for their dis- 
charge. Geysers, craters, sink holes, and tunnels con- 
stitute their connecting passages, and hot water, as- 
phaltum, paraffine and salt solutions appear in the out- 
flow, with foecal extrusions, intermittent or sporadic, 
according as the body is in a normal or disordered state. 
The earth has peristaltic action and digestion, thirst, 
hunger, constipation, body gases, flatulence, rumblings 
in the bowels and detonations of varying quality, inten- 
sity and significance. It is subject to convulsions from 
internal or external causes — from forces, magnetic, 
dynamic, electric, capillary, etc., which are attended by 
phenomena familiar to the every-day economy of the 
human system. It has agues, tremors, intermittent 
fevers, paralysis and labor pains, which, in fables, give 
birth to mountains, and betimes to mice. Excrescences 
crop out upon its surface, subterranean veins course 
through it, boils afflict it, fungus grows rank upon it, 
parasites infest it. It has absorption, respiration, ex- 
halations, perspiration, body odors, eructations. And- 
speaking of perspiration, only lately have physicists 
discovered that the dew upon its surface, instead of 
falling from the atmosphere above, was really the trans- 
pired humor from its body. The earth has also its 
emotions and its moods, its periods of calm and irrita- 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 25 

tion, its aspects of severity and serenity, of parsimony 
and beneficence, of beauty and gloom and melancholy. 
So near, indeed, are the macrocosm and the microcosm 
kin that one cannot be described except in the similitude 
of the other, with the attributes of both in juxtaposi- 
tion ; so that he has always been deemed the most ex- 
alted poet who could merge, transpose and blend their 
personalities in metaphor and trope. 

The structural anatomy of the Cosmos is not appar- 
ent on its surface, no more than that of the echinoderm, 
which it much resembles in shape and general appear- 
ance, the principal part of its framework and internal 
economy being hidden within a calcareous envelope. 
The ancients sometimes likened it to a tortoise, which 
is not an unfit comparison, though the ovate egg, typi- 
fied in the echinus, is much nearer in similitude and fact. 
At the Paris exposition there was a terrestrial globe, 
forty feet in diameter, scaled to proportions of one- 
millionth. Upon its surface the ravines and canyons 
appear like etchings, and the continental mountain 
ranges of the rock-ribbed earth are shown in mean 
projection about five inches high, representing an aver- 
age elevation of 2,250 feet, the serrations of the loftier 
peaks answering the spinal processes, or more nearly 
to the ambulacral zones, which rib the body walls of 
the trepang in longitudinal series. The coincidence in 
number and position of these ridges is noticeable, there 
being five in each. The ridges or ribs greatly strength- 
en the crust or envelope of the terrestrial cells, while 
the greater width and depth of the ocean hollows per- 
mit easy flexures in the adjustment of the ever chang- 
ing crust. Through the fissures which are constantly 



26 LUMINOUS BODIES 

occurring in the process of shrinkages, the sea water 
pours into the interior of the globe, and being heated 
there by inherent caloric, reappears in the form of ther- 
mal ejections and insensible perspiration, which gath- 
ering volume by accumulation and precipitation are 
again returned to the ocean to promote the circulation. 
Analogy might be pursued further, with perhaps in- 
creasing interest, but so far it will suffice. It would 
seem as if the earth and man had a common origin 
and a common end. Theology and science both agree 
that the end must be destruction and death, in the 
constituted order of things; and as the seed cannot 
germinate and live except it die, so through death will 
come metamorphoses and a reconstruction. Man and 
earth return to dust, disintegrated but not annihilated. 
Eventually they must enter upon a new cycle of devel- 
opment, newly created and born again, materially, just 
as progressive man must be reborn spiritually. Whence 
the vivifying spark? Was is not "in the beginning?" 
Was it not inherent in the principle of life ? Now, life 
is knowledge, the germ of life is intelligence; and 
knowledge is intelligence in graduated stages of devel- 
opment. When fully developed it becomes omniscience. 
Omniscience fills the universe and controls it. The soul 
of man is the spiritual reflection of the principle of life. 
It is progressing gradually toward the supreme climax 
of omniscience, and the earth is gradually advancing 
toward the equally indefinable status or condition 
known as heaven. This is the biology of the cosmos. 
The principle of life fills the earth as omniscience fills 
the universe, and the one is subject to the other.* 

* Menorah Monthly, June, 1898. 



IV 

VITO-MAGNETISM AND THE 
SOUL-AURA 



Chapter IV. 

VITO-MAGNETISM AND THE SOUL-AURA. 

Away back in the ages past, before the days of 
Abraham, when Egyptian civilization and transcen- 
dental philosophy were at their climax, astrologers 
were wont to hint vaguely at astral bodies and soul 
luminosity. Perhaps it was not then a new thought? 
Because, in all the world's literature, from the gen- 
esis of man to date, in mythology and the sacred 
books, and in revelations, all celestial beings, from the 
God head to the angels, have ever been represented 
as "bright and shining ones." Everywhere the in- 
grained conception of saints in glory is that they are 
creatures of light, walking in light that needs no sun, 
and reflecting the light of the Supreme Source, "in 
whose light we see light." And whenever special in- 
sight has been vouchsafed into the spiritual arcanum 
to those who have been gifted to see, to the apostles, 
prophets, saints, and seers, the visions have ever been 
of dazzling brightness, often too intense for human 
eyes to bear. And what perhaps is as remarkable as 
the manifestations themselves is, that in both the book 
of Daniel (12:3) and in the gospel of St. Matthew 
(13:43), ages apart, the declaration is made that this 
luminosity will be the distinguishing feature of saints 
in the future life. 

29 



30 LUMINOUS BODIES 

Surely these metaphors and illusions are not mean- 
ingless? They are nothing if not practical. 

And now human curiosity and inductive science step 
in to inquire what produces this luminosity? what 
vital element enters into its composition? But who 
knows? Did Christ Himself reveal? All that we 
actually do know is, that "when He doth appear, we 
shall be like Him." Nevertheless, in view of Biblical 
hints and intimations, not to say actual revelations, 
and the scientific facts that so many terrestial organ- 
isms in all the kingdoms are luminous, is it not reason- 
able to assume, by analogy, that the astral body or soul 
envelope of the future spiritual life will be electrical? 
especially as science is able to demonstrate that elec- 
tricity lights the universe, pervades all matter, ani- 
mates all created forms, keeps the solar systems in mo- 
tion, and holds them in their places ? 

The testimony of Professor C. F. Holder's book en- 
titled "Living Lights," is extremely valuable to those 
who endorse the "Electrical Theory of the Universe" 
(first promulgated twenty-five years ago by Dr. Henry 
Raymond Rogers, of Dunkirk, N. Y.), because it 
shows what a very large proportion of the world's 
living organisms are invested with the faculty of 
luminosity. The specimens examined and scientifically 
classified comprise several hundred forms of marine, 
vegetable and animal species, including birds like the 
night heron, and even man himself, several instances 
of luminosity in human beings having been observed 
in modern times, and quoted. 

No well informed naturalist will claim that these 
constitute even a small percentage of organisms so 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 31 

gifted, or of those likely to be discovered hereafter. 
By applied stimulation, not always of friction, the 
operator is able to develop this power at will in a great 
number of other organisms in a startling and visible 
manner; and furthermore, it is often made manifest in 
unexpected ways which Science has not been able to 
explain, but which unfortunately, are generally dis- 
credited because charlatans have made use of legerde- 
main to imitate natural and authentic phenomena. 

Fortunately for the success of Dr. Roger's original 
proposition, the theory of Sir Oliver Lodge, promul- 
gated some fifteen years ago, that all matter is electric 
in nature, is most helpful and satisfactory. Scientifi- 
cally stated {Electrical World and Engineer) : "The 
electronic charge carried by the corpuscle is regarded 
as the corpuscle itself. That is to say, instead of as* 
suming a nucleus or core of matter to carry the elec- 
tronic charge, the charge * * * is regarded as the 
corpuscle. All matter is assumed to be built upon these 
electronic charges or electrons, which are both nega- 
tive and positive. A hydrogen atom is supposed to 
contain about 700 of these electrons. A mercury atom 
is reckoned to have 200 x 700 or 140,000 electrons all 
stowed away inside * * * One might suppose 
that they are tightly packed? But, on the contrary, 
since the diameter of the electron, to account for its 
inertia, has to be 10.15 meters, or the millionth of a 
bicron, there is so much elbow-room for the 140,000 
supposed inhabitants of the mercury atom that they are 
roughly as distant from each other relatively to their 
size, as are the planets in our solar system * * * 
[The all-containing and boundless system of the Uni- 



32 LUMINOUS BODIES 

verse is repeated in the infinitesimal and inappreciable 
atom.] 

"The electrons perform orbits inside these little 
spheres, but the place which our sun occupies in our 
visible planetary system seems to be vacant in these 
atomic systems. According to the hypothesis, the elec- 
trons do not swing about a grand central electron, 
but about one another. The difference between one 
kind of matter and another lies in the physical and 
chemical properties of the atom; but the difference 
between the atoms is merely due to the difference in 
groupings of electrons." 

The Lodge theory means that all matter down to the 
ultimate corpuscle is electricity. But this potential 
agent which emanates from the Supreme Source is a 
substance more subtile than matter. It is like the ether 
which composes the "outer darkness," so frequently 
mentioned in the Scriptures. It has been called a 
fluid, "electric fluid." Of it the Heavens and Earth 
are made, in modified, combined, adjusted and related 
parts and proportions. In the language of Sir Oliver 
Lodge, "All chemical affinity is traced to aggregations 
of electrons or atoms, with odd or unbalanced elec- 
trons, either positive or negative. Chemical union is 
the result of the attraction of such unsatisfied electric 
charges on different atoms for one another. Cohesion 
is a less locally powerful, but more extended, electric 
attraction of groups of electrons in mutual linkage 
or satisfaction. Cohesion, in the electric sense, as in 
wireless telegraphy, is the artificially enhanced mole- 
cular attraction due to electric stimulus and the mo- 
mentary inductive displacement of groups of electrons." 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 33 

This same inscrutable agent of the divine omnipo- 
tence finds visible expression alike through nature's 
minutest forms and its most stupendous operations. 
It glows with mystic light in the coral polyps which 
illuminates the ocean, and in the mycelium of fungi 
(diatoms), which cause luminosity in decayed wood 
and mines and caves. This so-called phosphorescence 
is not constant. It depends upon the weather and 
the temperature, and is always associated with at- 
mospheric conditions that are attended with electrical 
phenomena. It has at times been manifested supremely 
in luminous fogs, luminous showers, in snow and ice 
and sleet, in hail stones which gleamed like diamonds 
and were shattered into phosphorescent spray when 
they struck the earth, in the aurora borealis, in the ice 
blink of the frozen oceans, in cosmic dust, which has 
pervaded one-third of the heavens at once. It is seen 
on gleaming mountain tops, and it rolls up from the sea 
in great waves of light, so bright that newspaper print 
has been read by it, and it paints the surface of the 
southern oceans in kaleidoscopic colors (the varicol- 
ored surface of equatorial and sub-tropical seas is 
caused by some coral polyps which are phosphores- 
cent*), of pink, green, purple and amber, like the 
tints of an abelone shell. It clings in globes of St. 
Elmo's fire (corposants) to the yard-arms of vessels, 
and it plays at Will O'the Wisp in fens and morasses. 
It is prominent in muscle activity; and according to 
eminent medical authority, even the process of diges- 
tion is electrical. As a test of this assumption, Dr. 
Albert G. Atkins, of the California Medical College, 



* Prof. C. F. Holder. 



34 LUMINOUS BODIES 

"passed a specially prepared electrode into the stomach 
of a healthy man by having him swallow it, and con- 
nected a wire with a galvanometer, which possesses 
a sensitive needle that is affected by an electric current. 
As soon as the electrode came in contact with the walls 
of the stomach the needle moved and showed ten milli- 
volts of direct electrical current." 

We are penetrating far into the Occult when we dis- 
cover that animal luminosity is the outcome and ex- 
pression, in many cases, of mental emotions ; and that 
it varies in color and intensity and duration according 
to the mood or temper of the subject This sensibility 
is strikingly manifested in the Sialis, a seaworm of 
Bermuda, which, during the wooing period in August, 
glows with luminosity all over its body, changing 
from yellow to orange, red and crimson, according to 
its varying moods. It is vividly manifested in the scar- 
let crests of the grouse family in the breeding season, 
especially in turkeys, and also in their daily amatory 
moods ; and it is alike indicative in the red spots and 
heightened colors of most of the salmonidae at such 
times, an explanation of which has long been sought 
by anglers and ichthyologists. It is like the halos 
which play about the heads of saints in medieval 
paintings to indicate their godliness : like the blushes 
which betray the love-lorn maiden to her swain: like 
the scarlet of anger and the pallor of fear. 

According to the Soul-Aura Cult, which is as old 
as Oriental astrology, but has been recently revived, 
every human body is constantly emitting a luminous 
substance of an electrical character, technically termed 
the "aura," which is visible to such persons as have 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 35 

been educated to the higher plane of soul vision, and 
indicates in varying colors and shades the emotions, 
thoughts and impulses of the subject; the orange of 
pride, the green of jealousy or deceit, the gray of 
depression, the dark red of the sensualist, the lavender 
of maternal love, the blue-gray of a noble ideal, etc. 
According to well known leaders of the Cult, there are 
some twenty-five indicative single shades or tints, 
besides many combinations or modifications; all of 
them indices of the relation which the psychic part of 
man has to the physical. Now in common philosophy, 
if these phenomena are capable of scientific proof, and 
it can be shown that they are electrical, what is there to 
challenge the hypothesis of a soul envelope in the 
future life which shall be all aura? If some human 
organisms are so surcharged with electricity as to be 
luminous in this life or to readily light a gas jet when 
the terminal nerves are excited by friction, or whose 
hair will at times stand out like iron fillings on a mag- 
net, what logic can militate against a more powerful 
investment in the body that is to be? If God is "light 
of light" and His chosen inheritance are to be "like 
Him," by what more simple or direct process can they 
be adapted for the Celestial Kingdom, which to the 
writer's mind is presumably a substantial actual place 
of intellectual activity, where each individual cor- 
puscle in this inscrutable and illimitable system spirit- 
ually endowed and divinely directed, works out his al- 
lotted mission as a ministering angel of "flaming fire," 
whose prototypes are recognized in Gabriel, Michael 
and Ithuriel. 



V 
COLOR EFFECTS OF THE EMOTIONS 



Chapter V. 
COLOR EFFECTS OF THE EMOTIONS. 

One very interesting problem is the ability of many 
fishes and reptiles and hairless naked creatures to 
adapt their normal body color to environment. I do 
not refer to the gradual changes (apsotochroma- 
tism) in the feathers of birds and pelage of animals 
from natural causes as the result of growth, moulting, 
age and the like, nor to any extraneous causes, or ex- 
ternal irritations, like boiling, which causes crustaceans 
and some fishes to turn red ; but rather to the operation 
of the sensory nerves which cause contraction or ex- 
pansion of the pigment cells under the epidermis. 

Prof. Holder's idea, in discussing protective resem- 
blance is that color, via the eye, causes contraction and 
expansion of color cells, and thereby protection; the 
proof being that blind animals do not simulate their 
surroundings, though my own observations discover 
that blind fishes, notably brook trout, become a velvety 
jet black or blue black, very much like the hue of the 
blue cat. But the darkening may come from lying in 
shadow, whether the fish be blind or not. 

To my mind no explanation is satisfactory which 
does not admit that adaptation of body color to sur- 
roundings is accomplished by will power in conjunc- 
tion with vito-magnetic currents. There is no doubt 

39 



40 LUMINOUS BODIES 

of the ability of some human beings to blush at will, by 
holding the breath, or to turn pale by checking the 
heart action ; operating certain sets of muscles ; though 
changes of color are involuntary as well, whether 
caused by fright or emotion. 

In these days of electrical discovery, we all hear a 
good deal of vito-magnetism ; how it has positive and 
negative poles with power to repel or attract, as in 
any galvanic battery. Many of us have felt its mys- 
terious influence at times very strangely in our physical 
bodies when we have happened by chance to take seats 
next to perfect strangers, and at once began to feel a 
personal repugnance, or a personal attraction. In the 
negative case we have felt uncomfortable, uneasy, and 
perhaps apprehensive until the current was broken 
by removal of the obnoxious stimulating presence. 
On the other hand, pleasurable emotions are some- 
times excited in persons even to ardor so intense as to 
produce what is termed love at first sight. These 
emotions are the visible expression of sensory nerves 
operated upon by a central dynamo. It is called nerve 
force. Vito-magnetism is often attended by luminos- 
ity. Biologists are familiar with hundreds of forms in 
the several organized kingdoms which have been scien- 
tifically classed and named. Many plants and trees 
are known which affect the compass needle at a dis- 
tance of 30 or 40 feet, and in the case of the tropical 
plant known to botanists as the Phytolacca electrica, 
"a touch of a twig gives to the hand as vivid a shock 
as that of a Ruhmkorf battery; and if the compass be 
placed in the center of the bush the needle begins to 
whirl." [Dr. Rogers in Sun Heat and Sun Light.] 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 41 

At Rosedale, N. C, near New Berne, there is a tree 
growing in a swamp on the Wolfenden estate which 
no one can strike with an axe without being knocked 
to the ground. In West Creek township, Indiana, 
near the Kankakee marshes, there is an area of several 
square miles which is so charged with electricity that 
residence there is dangerous, fatalities occurring fre- 
quently. 

Ocean phosphorescence is a familiar phenomena. 
It is known to be produced by minute living organisms, 
but science has been slow to admit that the luminosity 
is electrical. Sufficient demonstration of the truth 
took place on the beach at Kittery Point, Me., in the 
summer of 1905, following severe earthquake shocks 
in that State and New Hampshire, when at half tide 
"a brilliant white light, covering the whole beach rose 
from the sand to a height of about six inches. At the 
same time a strong sulphurous odor was emitted from 
the same locality, it being so offensive that it was nec- 
essary to close tightly all doors and windows of the 
hotel. The light and odor lasted for about two hours, 
disappearing with the full tide." 

So, having discovered electricity pervades all created 
things, we find that when concealment seems desirable 
to a lizard, snake, fish, or molusk, through fear or ap- 
prehension, contraction of the heart acting as a dynamo 
stimulates an electric current which operates chem- 
ically upon the various pigments to produce assimi- 
lating protective colors, whereby to render it invisible. 
After apprehension is removed the muscles relax and 
the color returns to normal or else the creature crawls 
out of its environment and sympathy does the rest. 



42 LUMINOUS BODIES 

There is nothing more marvelous in this than there is 
in the action of sympathetic ink. As the slight-of-hand 
operators say : "Now you see it and now you don't see 
it!" Thereby is really obtained a true electrotype of 
the tints in juxtaposition, be they red, green, brown, 
yellow, or gray. In cases of persons struck by light- 
ning, leaf patterns from adjacent trees have often been 
printed on their cuticle which seems to be a fairly good 
substitute for the film of the camera. Artists have long 
been contriving a process to transfer colored form and 
patterns, but Nature seems still to be a little ahead. 



VI 

THE ELECTRICAL BODY OF THE 
FUTURE LIFE 



Chapter VI. 

THE ELECTRICAL BODY OF THE 
FUTURE LIFE. 

The thought that the body of the future life may be 
electrical was suggested to the writer by the wireless 
message and the flight of the angel Gabriel as men- 
tioned in Daniel ix. 21. It is only a surmise. It does 
not amount to a conviction. How can we know? It 
is not within the mental scope of man to penetrate the 
realm of the unknowable. If science fail to support, 
and Bible revelation be rejected, what avenue to knowl- 
edge is left? How can the truth be known? Reason 
itself is shy. 

At the same time it cannot be denied that Scripture 
seems to support the postulate here presented in a start- 
ling manner. There were a great many phenomena 
associated with the life of Christ as recorded by the 
Apostles which appear in evidence. 

The Apostle Paul has made an imperfect attempt in 
Cor. xv. to define the substance and nature of the spir- 
itual body which is to traverse celestial space after its 
transformation at the putative Resurrection; but psy- 
chology was a crude study in Paul's days, and his expo- 
sition does not satisfy. Modern science, however, does 
help to explain many phenomena which were formerly 

45 



46 LUMINOUS BODIES 

unaccountable, or accounted as miracles, and to give 
meaning to texts of Scripture which have hitherto 
seemed void of significance. 

During all historic time a large proportion of man- 
kind has believed in the immortality of the soul. Since 
Christ came many believe also in the resurrection of the 
body. What body ? Our carnal natural body which is 
subject to decay and corruption ? Which has been put 
away in the grave diseased, deformed, dismembered, 
or torn to shreds by explosions ? Christ and his disci- 
ples say, "No." But we are told that when the final 
call shall come "we shall all be changed." And we are 
assured furthermore that "flesh and blood cannot in- 
herit the kingdom of God." [This postulate is diame- 
trically opposite to Job's idea in the Old Testament 
times. Job xix. 26.] 

Now, as man was "created in God's own image," 
and Christ, the divine emanation, "took upon himself 
the form of a man," and as "God is a spirit," and "his 
angels (who were created before the world was made) 
are they not all ministering spirits," the main split in 
the analogy seems to consist in the fact that human 
beings are at first mortal, and so subject to physical 
death and dissolution, whereas the Godhead and angels, 
archangels, seraphim, cherubim, and other celestial be- 
ings so often spoken of in the Scriptures, are immortal. 
But we are taught that in due time our "spirits shall 
return to God who gave them," and then we shall be 
like them. In what guise or substance, then, will they 
return? The luminous transfiguration of the Saviour 
on the Mount gives an inkling. 

All the angels who have ever had intercourse with 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 47 

man on earth resembled men, and we have Scripture 
record of one hundred and thirty of their visitations in 
Old and New Testament times ; so that their form, be- 
havior, features, missions, and characteristics are not 
altogether hypothetical. In the cases of Gabriel, Ra- 
phael, Michael, and some others, their visits were so 
frequent that their persons became familiar. Although 
these messengers usually appeared in human form, they 
often disguised themselves, just as Christ did during 
his last forty days (Matt, xxviii. 3 ; Luke xxiv. 37), or 
transformed themselves at pleasure (Mark xvi. 12). 
Quite frequently their faces were luminous (Rev. i. 14, 
15, 16). On occasions their effulgence was so dazzling 
as to terrify (Matt, xxviii. 3, 4). They seemed to eat, 
speak, taste, hear, see, feel, and assimilate food a? 
mortals do. Three of them sat at meat with Abraham. 
Two ate with Lot. In some instances they ordered 
what should be served. One wrestled with Jacob, 
showing inherent athletic strength. But they mani- 
fested supernatural powers as well. They appeared and 
vanished at will. Obstacles did not intercept their 
passage or their vision. Distance did not limit their 
flight, sight or hearing. Levitation in fire, air, and 
water was a personal endowment. One of them 
ascended in the flame of Manoah's altar and was not 
consumed. They had phenomenal powers delegated 
to them and were often employed on errands of mercy, 
or as nuncios, or as agents of destruction, armed with 
thunderbolts, to execute God's wrath. They seemed to 
possess in a modified degree the divine attributes. So 
likewise Christ ate and drank with his disciples and 
others after his carnal body had been discarded, par- 



48 LUMINOUS BODIES 

taking of bread, meat, honey, and fish at sundry times. 
At times he changed his features so that his intimate 
male and female associates did not recognize him 
(Mark xvi. 12; Luke xxiv. 16, 17). He walked on the 
water; he was caught up in the air; he appeared and 
vanished at will. At times his face was luminous, and 
at the transfiguration his whole body was aglow with 
incalescence. In like phase he vanished out of their 
sight at the last. 

All this preamble is pertinent to the query: What 
shall be our future body in life immortal ? The Scrip- 
ture saith: "It doth not yet appear what we shall be, 
but we shall be like Him." (1 John iii. 2.) And 
again : "When I wake up after thy likeness, I shall be 
satisfied with it." (Ps. xvii. 16.) Christ has said: "I 
and the Father are one." He has repeatedly declared 
his kinship with mankind. He assured his disciples 
of their oneness with the Father and with himself. 
There we argue from analogy what our body will re- 
semble, and we may gather by the same logical process 
what its substance will be. 

Let us consider: 

While the Saviour was "of the earth earthy," he was 
subject to physical limitations. After his resurrection 
he was exempt. His face was radiant. A halo of light 
at times encircled his head, and on occasion "his coun- 
tenance shone like lightning." Were not these phe- 
nomena purely electrical? Was not his new body an 
electrical body peculiarly adapted to the realm of infin- 
itude ? Why not electrical ? The idea is not preposter- 
ous. Modern science has discovered that electricity is 
not matter. Can there not be entities which we wot not 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 49 

of, so different from our own that the Saviour himself 
would not attempt to describe them, simply because, as 
he declared, his disciples would not comprehend; any 
more, perhaps, than a fish (as some philosopher has 
cited) which has known only aquatic life, can imagine 
a species of beings living out of water and breathing 
air? 

What other substance than electricity is so subtle 
that solid bodies present no obstacle to its passage, and 
yet so potent that it can smash rocks to atoms ? Christ's 
resurrected body possessed this nature. Its character 
was manifested by the aureola which enveloped him at 
his transfiguration and final ascension. He was elec- 
trically luminous when he walked on the water, and the 
sailors ''thought it was a spirit." His electrical nature 
was manifest especially in his power of levitation. 
The same peculiarity invested the "shining ones" who 
sat by the Saviour's vacated tomb, and it has character- 
ized the presence of all angels, "saints in light" (Col. i. 
12), who appeared in visions to Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, 
and St. John, in their spiritual seances and interviews. 
The glare in almost every instance was blinding: its 
effect stunning. At the Pentecost the Holy Spirit 
showed itself in "tongues of fire." It blinded St. Paul 
on his way to Damascus. It was present in the "She- 
china" of the inner tabernacle, in the "pillar of fire" 
which preceded the Isrealitish vanguard like an ignis 
fatims in their wilderness journey, and in the Ark of 
the Covenant. It was conspicuously manifested when 
Nahum inadvertently put out his hand to steady the ark 
and fell dead as if he had touched a live wire. It kin- 
dled the wood of Elijah's altar and licked up the water 



50 LUMINOUS BODIES. 

in its trench. It explains the transcendent glory of the 
New Jerusalem which was beyond the power of St. 
John to describe; it is ever present in the spectacular 
drama of the Revelation, sometimes in brilliant corusca- 
tions, and again accompanied by thunder and tremors. 
Presumably it will scintillate from the "crowns of 
glory" which are promised to the blessed. 

Satan is declared to have fallen from Heaven "like 
lightning." Lightning is not an emblem of God's 
wrath, though it has often been used as its instrument, 
but rather the glow of the divine beatitudes. This 
theory of the electrical body, if accepted, makes the 
visible phenomena of modern spiritualism possible and 
real. It makes the hypothesis of annihilation quite as 
possible, for lightning often consumes and leaves no 
trace behind. An agent so potential, if wielded by a 
Gabriel or a Raphael under divine direction, would 
eradicate all material things as easily and completely 
as they did Sodom and Gomorrah ; if it so pleased the 
Almighty, rather than to exercise the divine fiat, which 
presumably can unmake as easily as it can create. 

"I am the light of the world." God said : "Let there 
be light, and there was light." What kind of light? 
It could not have been of the planets, for suns, moons, 
and stars had not yet been created. Was it not elec- 
trical light like the aurora borealis, whose displays have 
at times within the past century lighted up a hemisphere 
simultaneously? "His lightnings gave shine unto the 
world." (Ps. xcvii. 4.) At creation the earth was 
given a physical light of its own, quite irrespective of 
the great "Light of lights." But in the future of im- 
mortality there will be no need of the sun, "for the 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 51 

Lord giveth them light." (Rev. xxv. 5.) "By his 
light we shall see light," just as by the solar light we 
see the sun. 

The passage of man's spiritual body, the "vital 
spark," through space in the eternal hereafter, is cer- 
tainly not more wonderful or mysterious than the tran- 
sit of a wireless message through the terrestrial atmos- 
phere. That appreciable time is occupied in its passage 
from the celestial realm to earth, or at least through the 
domain to the stellar universe (beyond which, according 
to Wallace, all is infinity) is evident from the divine 
injunction to the angel Gabriel, on one occasion, to "fly 
quickly.'' In the carnal envelope flight would be re- 
tarded ; in vacuity the duration of electric transit would 
probably be not appreciable. It might be as quick as 
thought itself! But the object of an electrical body is 
not only to facilitate transit, but to serve as a visible 
medium of identification between those who have been 
acquainted on earth aforetime. Our carnal faculties of 
perception and our ever changing bodies would be un- 
reliable factors to depend on, indeed! Any soul that 
loves has a yearning for a visible and tangible presence. 
Telepathy does not satisfy ; contact is desired. A living 
soul needs a vitalized body. Electrified, the spiritual 
body becomes the visible expression of a living soul. 
Its audible expression has been heard in the "still small 
voice," as well as in the thunders of Sinai ! 

If mortal man on earth can conjure an electric spark, 
give it voice, and dispatch it from continent to conti- 
nent in three seconds, God the all-Powerful can animate 
a "ministering spirit" of the same nature as His own 
and make its flight instantaneous. "He maketh his 



52 LUMINOUS BODIES 

ministers a flaming fire." (Ps. civ. 4.) In like man- 
ner the human-divine being when translated can go 
where it will. No mortal body will clog or impede its 
passage. The law of gravitation will not confine it, but 
its flight will annihilate time and space. Its presence 
would be almost ubiquitous. Thereby we prove our 
kinship with the ''Father of Lights," approximately 
omnipresence. 

"I have said, ye are gods !" 

Taking this view of our oneness with the Trinity, as 
taught by the Saviour, we get rid of the skeptic specious 
objection that .man is too insignificant to engage the 
special interest of a Supreme Creator who deals with 
the infinite and illimitable ; and that the idea of a vicari- 
ous sacrifice of the Divine Son for fallen man is prepos- 
terous. 

Is there anything more unique or improbable 
in the assumption that the ultimate purpose of the 
Deity in creating the universe was to subserve the pro- 
duction of a living soul to be developed in a perishable 
body, than there is in the scientific fact that the infini- 
tesimal germ or protoplasm should enlarge into a crea- 
ture so many million times its size as to be beyond 
mental or mathematical comprehension ? 

Electricity is not matter. It is a substance, an ele- 
ment, capable of being changed into another element, 
as has been demonstrated by eminent English scientists. 
It pervades the whole system of created things, the air, 
the sea, the land, objects organic and inorganic, animate 
and inanimate, animals, plants, marine forms, insects 
and all the rest, manifesting itself transcendently in the 
lightning and in the aurora borealis, and extending be- 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 53 

yond the confines of the universe into the unknown 
realm of the infinite. Matter rots, decays, perishes, but 
electricity is imperishable. 

Hitherto the Creator has manifested Himself to man- 
kind through material objects, because man is "of the 
earth earthy," and perceives with his physical senses. 
In his spiritual existence his faculties will be different, 
and he will see marvelous phenomena which are not 
perceptible now. Christ has promised this. Electricity 
is the connecting link between the material and the im- 
material. It is the most potent, subtle, and mysterious 
of all palpable and impalpable media. Our carnal bod- 
ies are already charged with it ; then why may not our 
spiritual bodies or soul-envelopes be composed of it 
entirely ? "As the lightning cometh out of the east and 
shineth unto the west, even so shall the coming of the 
Son of Man be." (Matt. xiv. 23; Job. xxvii. 2, 3, 4; 
Job xxviii. 35 ; Ezekiel i. 13, 14; Daniel x. 6; Luke xvii. 
24; Matt. xxiv. 27 ; Matt, xxviii. 3; Rev. iv. 5.) 

Electrical phenomena are constantly occurring which 
point toward the final consummation and explain the 
problem of the immortal body. Suggestions to this end 
are ever present, but our mortal comprehensions are so 
obtuse that we fail to perceive their significance. These 
phenomena, both in nature and invention, are marvelous 
and inexplicable, except on the basis of my postulate, 
but they forecast the existence which is to come. Thejc 
are "mighty in operation." The term body implies, 
something visible and tangible, and electricity is tran- 
scendently palpable when applied. 

If spirit or soul exist here, or anywhere, expressing 
itself through substance other than matter, then indi- 



54 LUMINOUS BODIES 

viduality and personal recognition may continue for 
eternity; otherwise recognition would not be possible. 
Immortality is conceivable with electricity in esse as 
its factor.* 



Open Court, 1893. 



VII 

THE SUPREME SOURCE AND ITS 
POTENTIAL AGENT 



Chapter VII. 

THE SUPREME SOURCE AND 
ITS POTENTIAL AGENT.* 

The immanent presence of God is in every recorded 
instance in the Scripture indicated by electric pheno- 
mena ; Sinai, the Burning Bush, Horeb, the destruction 
of the Cities of the Plain, the Transfiguration, Elijah 
in his Fiery Chariot, the Epiphany, the Shekina, the 
Ark of the Covenant, the Conversion of St. Paul, the 
Ministration of Angels. So, also, all facts in modern 
physics go far to prove that electricity plays quite as 
important a part in nature as it ever did in any past 
epochs. Professor Dubois-Reymond demonstrates that 
it is immanent in muscle-activity, and Professor Au- 
gustus Waller, of London, shows how electric fluctua- 
tions take place so long as a substance, animal or vege- 
table, is still alive, and that the absence of electricity 
indicates absence of vitality. 

When Benjamin Franklin first discovered that elec- 
tricity was a potential agent, and that the lightnings 
of the clouds and the thunderstorms were but the 
manifestations of stupendous forces which were at 
work inside our earth and within its atmosphere, he 
opened up an era of discovery which has led rapidly up 

* Vide Psa. 56:13; Habakkuk 3:4; Rev. 1:14, 15, 16. 

57 



53 LUMINOUS BODIES 

to the marvelous revelations and appliances of the pres- 
ent period. Broadly it has been ascertained by tenta- 
tive experiments with electricity, that it is the funda- 
mental source of all light, heat, and power, as well as 
of gravitation ; that by it the whole planetary system is 
controlled, and every individual orb held in place. In- 
duction has accomplished wonders. The field of physi- 
cal research seems to have been remunerately traversed. 

But there is an aphelion, or ultima thule, where 
Somatologists and Theologians can unite their energies 
in research and peradventure find a bond of co-opera- 
tion which w,ill lead up to a conscientious recognition 
of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe as the First 
Great Cause, and to universal devotion and worship of 
His Name. So be it they may be reconciled without 
frantic appeals to Reason, or to the Prophets and Apos- 
tles. To all true Religion, as to all true Science, the 
Universe is an open book whose divine idiographs are 
decipherable by systematic study. But to evolve solu- 
tions the two must work together. Science and Faith 
are the wings whereby the philosopher and the priest 
can soar to a true conception of God, whom men ought 
now to worship far more in this epoch of discovery and 
illumination than they did in the era of so-called relig- 
ious superstition — so little did the early philosophers 
know of the sublimest laws of Nature, or of the Source 
Omnipotent. 

Agnostics have ever demanded demonstrations. 
Their appeals to Reason to establish facts have been 
most plaintive, and not without justification. Specula- 
tive philosophy, speculative theology, and pseudo- 
science have been the ruin of the faith. Churches 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 59 

have been depleted of believers because of the obvious 
inconsistencies which were presented. Causists are 
eminently seekers after truth. At last we have the 
truth. The great secrets of gravitation and of the 
planetary courses which Newton and the Astronomers 
guessed at but could not fathom are now made clear; 
and Science knows and can easily demonstrate that 
Electricity is the prime constituent of all the basic 
elements of fire, earth, air, water, light, and mo- 
mentum; that the Earth itself is but a big electro- 
magnet, and all the other worlds are like unto it; co- 
operative, co-ordinate and interdependent, and kept 
in place and play by established electric currents con- 
nected with one supreme great central dynamo, en- 
abling the philosophers and astronomers to account for 
natural phenomena which were inexplicable before. 
The pranks of tornadoes, the recurrence of the tides, 
the convulsions and cataclysms of the Earth, the spots 
on the sun, the aurora borealis, the sun dogs, the water 
spouts and parhelia, the changes of climate, all the 
multifarious celestial and terrestial happenings which 
amaze, delight or terrify, are accounted for with ease. 
Indeed, the scientist of to-day can reproduce the same 
phenomena artificially! And everywhere on the 
habitable globe, wherever we have an electric plant 
and lighted streets and parks, we have but a reflex of 
the sublime planisphere of the heavens above with its 
myriads of twinkling stars, large and small, single and 
in clusters, some radiant and some dim, indicated in 
vari-colored tints of white, yellow, crimson, green and 
blue. 

Each one of these celestial lamps is complementary 



60 LUMINOUS BODIES 

to the rest, generating its own vito-magnetic current, 
and so by continuous and never-ending circuit holding 
each member of the celestial community to its ap- 
pointed orbit, to its rotation, and to its economic 
reciprocal relation to all the rest. Verily, the "works 
of the Lord are mighty in operation," as the Psalmist 
sang of old; but in his day who could understand 
them? 

By the same tokens the Scientist discovers that no 
orbs are luminous in themselves ; that they give no in- 
candescent heat, not even the sun itself; that they are 
intrinsically opaque and dead, until all work together in 
comprehensive accord to complete the order of the Uni- 
verse in harmony with the omnipotent source of all 
power — and of all Good. 

Taxonomically, all worlds and the materials of which 
they are composed are physically the same, with similar 
atmospheres and homogeneous characteristics, and op- 
erated by the same natural laws; so that a scrupulous 
analogy would decide that they are in large part habit- 
able and populous like our own Earth. With such con- 
cession philosophy will be prepared to go a step farther 
and allow that the natural law extends to the Spiritual 
world, and that soul culture in the domain of intellect 
is generated and promoted by correspondence and close 
communion with the supreme source of intelligence, 
and that "by His light we receive light." God is the 
first great cause, and the first great cause is God.* Man 



* Max Mueller, in "Chips from a German Workshop," makes the asser- 
tion that "there is in man a faculty for correspondence with the Infinite, 
of which the outcome is Religion. And this religion is introactive. The 
more religious we are the more this faculty is sharpened and its scope 
enlarged. A flash of celestial lightning should fuse in an instant and 
forever all that is base and mean within us." 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 61 

can accomplish nothing of himself. The words of the 
Scripture are: "Without God we can do nothing." 
Neither pole of a magnet is operative by itself. With- 
out reciprocity the Supreme Being is as helpless to elim- 
inate sin and depravity as Man is. Positive and 
negative must co-operate to exert moral force, and form 
character. Unless the circuit is established man re- 
mains a dead wire. Is not this exact Science? 

Who will gainsay that this spiritual intercourse is 
subjectively electrical? Prayer itself is a wireless mes- 
sage, operative only when the circuit is complete and 
the atmosphere is fit. But between the material and 
spiritual worlds communication cannot but be imperfect 
and unsatisfactory, so variant and anomalous are the 
two kingdoms. It is only when disembodied souls can 
meet unhampered by mortal clogs that perfect inter- 
course is possible. The two states of existence are 
provided with different faculties and different media. 
Here everything is material, physical. In the life be- 
yond the grave the electrical continuity will not be 
broken. The field will be enlarged. Transit will be 
facilitated. The celestial community will become homo- 
geneous. Intellectual accord will prevail. Peradven- 
ture the bounds of the Universe may be attainable by 
the itinerant soul in quest of knowledge ? Each minis- 
tering spirit winging its way with the speed of a light- 
ning flash at the divine behest, or by its own volition, 
athwart the untracked space of the infinite ? But in this 
astral intercourse mere telepathy between disembodied 
spirits would be unsatisfying. To be happy the soul 
must be invested with personality. Pure intellect or 
mind can have no emotion, no sympathy, no love unless 



62 LUMINOUS BODIES 

it is self-imbued with these attributes, like the Holy 
Ghost. Personal contact is essential to "fulness of 
joy." Without it intercourse would be as void as a 
telephone message. Educated in this mundane kinder- 
garten, with our physical senses as cues to recognition, 
our translated spirits would naturally cling to their 
sensuous faculties of sight, touch, and hearing, and 
yearn for the caress of eye, and cheek, and hand. How 
shall we be provided ? 

Certainly we must be impressed by the analogue that 
the Holy Spirit is to the Spiritual World what electric- 
ity is to the Natural World, and that one supreme law 
and one controlling force obtains in both? Let the 
answer be, then, according to the logic of corollaries, 
this great elementary principle, the magnetic fluid, 
which fills the entire system of created things, and gov- 
erns and binds it together, which is the essence of all 
life, and dominates every known organism from Man 
to the microscopic kingdom, will play its leading part in 
the Realm of the Infinite, where limitations are un- 
known and celerity the rule. Encysted or clothed in its 
electrical capsule, each individual soul will at once be- 
come visible through its luminosity, and palpable by its 
vital force, and audible by its sound, and so become 
recognizable instanter among its fellows. Accomplish- 
ment of effort will be instantaneous. To will and to do 
will be simultaneous. In this attribute, at least, we shall 
be "like him," measurably omnipresent. Thus endowed 
the errant soul will be able to make its choice of way 
stations or abiding places, in this planet or that, in the 
course of its itinerary, and this it will do according to 
its predilections or its mortal training, and according 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 63 

to the character it formed in the sublunary probation, 
whether it were good or bad. So will the future exist- 
ence be happy or miserable, as one makes it. Kindred 
spirits or affinities will flock together. Personal gods 
and personal devils will have their locum tenens respec- 
tively. Souls termed lost will lapse into the "outer 
darkness," named in the Scriptures, which fills the in- 
terstellar place, while the blessed will find congenial 
homes in "mansions" previously secured to them. 
There is no hell place for sinners. Sin inexorably and 
inevitably works out its own punishment; as the elect 
work out their own salvation. Penitence and compunc- 
tion will happily reverse the situation at any time for 
souls termed lost, for they will be always free-will 
agents. Penitence sets the moral force in motion, and 
the dead wire becomes a live conductor. Redemption 
follows. It may remain dead forever, and that is eter- 
nal punishment. 



VIII 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETERNAL 
FELICITY 



Chapter VIII. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETERNAL FELICITY. 

God is love. The Scriptures declare it. We have an 
assurance of God's regard and fidelity, and of our at- 
tainable good fortune, when we read Christ's words: 

"Father, I will that those whom Thou hast given me 
may be with me where I am." 

It is the nature of all lovers to wish to be near the 
ones loved, and of those who love wisely to be forever 
joined. It is the burden of every prayer which goes up 
from the bedside where love kneels in behalf of those 
upon whom the shadow of death has fallen : "I will that 
those whom Thou hast given me may be with me where 
I am." We would fain hold them to earth while we 
remain, and so beg God to spare them for the nonce. 
As this same shadow of death is on us all the time, 
though we do not realize it, let us hasten to reciprocate 
the divine love, so that we may keep company together 
eternally. Not only religious teaching, but every in- 
stinct of the human heart assures us that God is su- 
premely good; and what is goodness but a phase of 
love ? It is this belief of mankind in infinite goodness 
or regard, combined with infinite power, and spread 
thickly with mercy, which inspires our hearts with the 
inextinguishable hope of immortal life, which the at- 
tested resurrection of Jesus Christ confirms. But for 

67 



68 LUMINOUS BODIES 

this even, the future would be all uncertainty, even as 
it was with Job. 

Logically, if we believe in the eternal love of God, 
the resurrection of Christ from the dead, so far from 
seeming an improbability, with presumptions against 
it, will be in line with what we expect; that is, in the 
direction of immortality. Without this belief, no 
amount of historical evidence can convince, "even 
though one rose from the dead." 

Prof. Motley declares that men do not believe a thing 
on the strength of external evidence alone. The Sci- 
entists say differently. But we believe that eternal love 
has bestowed eternal life, and that we are not to die 
as the beasts that perish; creatures which modern 
psychology tries to prove by object lessons are in some 
respects intellectually superior to men, and that we are 
all simply grade creatures fashioned alike but with 
generic differences. 

Sad that man, who was made in the divine image, 
should go back on his Creator in so gross a fashion ! 
By such token fellowship with God is out of the ques- 
tion — drops out of the equation — and man's spiritual 
ostracism is a foregone certainty. There must be sym- 
pathy with affinity before we are mentally fitted to ac- 
cept the external evidences of the Great First Cause 
as manifested in Christ and in the works of nature. 
To quote the Rev. Bishop Greer : "If Columbus had 
not had in himself the spirit of discovery he never 
would have noticed the evidences around his vessel, 
which he did, of a nearby continent yet unrevealed" ; 
so it is only when we have that spirit of eternal love 
in our hearts, which reaches out to meet and recipro- 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 69 

cate the divine projection, that we can appreciate ex- 
ternal evidences at their full value, and so are impelled 
to believe that eternal love has given eternal life. 

It has been asserted with too much dogmatism that 
"apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ there is 
no firm basis for faith." If this were so, what of the 
prophets and saints of old? If this assumption be true, 
what hope of immortality stood for the world before 
the propitiation came? In the Psalms it is enjoined 
no less than seventy times to "trust in the Lord," whose 
mercy is as broad as the East is from the West. "Thou 
shalt give him everlasting felicity. And why ? Because 
he putteth his trust in the Lord, whose mercy shall 
not miscarry" (Psalms 81 :6y) . 

This earthly life, if properly lived, is an enviable 
state and a happy one. It is glorious to exist, simply 
to be alive and well. It is meet and good to live. But 
how much sweeter and better when we know that the 
end of life which men call death will be merely a let- 
ting go of that which we can no longer hold — a cast- 
ing off of what can no longer serve us — to exchange 
for the joyous fulness of a more abundant life. It is 
only in the light of our eternal hope that we can in- 
terpret ourselves and know what we really are and 
what we really mean. 



IX 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 



Chapter IX. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

Christ taught it to His disciples to the best of their 
comprehension. But they did not fuly understand 
Him, and He told them so. He said, "I talk to you in 
parables. There are many things which I have to im- 
part, but ye cannot bear them now." He did not at- 
tempt to discuss the theology of religion. He preached 
unity of faith and of doctrine, and deplored sectarian- 
ism. He warned His followers against the formula 
of perfunctory religion, just as in the time of the old 
prophets the sacrifice of bulls and goats was enjoined 
as not the true sacrifice which God required — rather 
a contrite heart and a correct walk. 

Original sin is the wilful purpose to get rid of re- 
sponsibility. When the "first parents" chose to set up 
a law unto themselves they accomplished their inde- 
pendence, but severed the connection between them- 
selves and the Supreme Source. The dynamic circuit 
was broken and the wire burned out, the incandesence 
appearing in a blaze of electricity, which bore the per- 
sonal outline of an angel with a flaming sword. This 
was the first historical appearance of a ministering 
spirit in an electrical garb. The result of this broken 
magnetic circuit was punishment, trials, discomforts, 
disturbed conscience, and moral degradation, com- 

73 



74 LUMINOUS BODIES 

bined with an unceasing effort to substitute artificial 
and low-down carnal pleasures for the spiritual com- 
fort and true happiness which always accompanies a 
normal connection between a soul and its God. "By 
thy light we shall see light." This is the divine light 
which is from Everlasting. It emanated from the Su- 
preme Source long before suns and moons and planets 
were made. These orbs constitute the electric plant of 
the Universe — the entire system of created things. In 
due course of time they became fitted for living crea- 
tures, man included; and all would have eternal life 
but for man's disobedience. This is the Scriptural 
transliteration which has become intelligible to Reason 
only since man's psycho-electric relation to the Su- 
preme Source has been scientifically discovered. 

Religion has always been fed on superstition. Tra- 
dition since the "Fall" has resulted in myths and alle- 
gories, folklore, dogmas, doctrine, rituals, and a per- 
verted theology, which has taught the necessity of con- 
ciliating the wrath of an offended God by all sorts of 
penances and personal sacrifices, instead of confessing 
our sins, and by penitence and sincere efforts to amend 
to make ourselves acceptable to Him, reconciling our- 
selves to Him. This latter process is Religion, and 
the knowledge how to retain it, and so re-establish the 
spiritual connection once summarily broken, is what is 
denominated The Truth. This truth will make us 
"free." 

Now it is a startling anomaly that man who is born 
a free-will agent, and can control his own destiny by 
simply "pressing the button," figuratively speaking, is 
the most abject slave to besetting sins so long as he 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 75 

continues a "dead wire." In his alienation or dissocia- 
tion from the Supreme Being he either pettishly curses 
his Maker for his birth and his moral responsibility, 
or he attempts to content himself with the sensual 
vanities of his present mortal existence; which it is 
possible to attain to repletion under favoring condi- 
tions and intelligent exertions. "Let us eat, drink, and 
be merry, for to-morrow we die." These are the "fools 
who have no understanding," and "have said in their 
hearts there is no God." 

Now, to know God, is to believe in Him. As soon 
as this belief is established, we are at one with Him, 
and the problem of how to attain eternal felicity is 
solved. 

There is no other key to fit it save the psycho-electric 
hypothesis. 



X 
THE UNITED PHILOSOPHIES 



Chapter X. 
THE UNITED PHILOSOPHIES. 

The Greeks taught the immortality of the soul, but 
repudiated the thought of the resurrection of the body. 
What body ? St. Paul says "the spiritual body," which 
is according to reason the exact truth. If the carnal 
body, the thought is distressful to those whose rela- 
tives have died deformed or imperfect, to say nothing 
of the dismembered multitudes and those blown to 
atoms by explosions, or cremated, or otherwise physi- 
cally disposed of. If the resurrection is of a trans- 
formed body, then it is not the same body. If it is a 
physical body, and the "new earth" is to be a material 
earth, then we are to have food, digestion, assimila- 
tion, growth, decline, decay, and death again! repeat- 
ing the earthly seasons of seedtime and harvest. (Thou 
hast delivered my soul from death . . . that I 
may walk before God in the light of the living. Ps. 
56:13.) If, on the other hand, we have a spiritual 
resurrection, we are to have a spiritual body with dif- 
ferent entity and different perceptive faculties and 
different powers and intelligence and an envelope 
which will help mutual recognition and serve for iden- 
tification. I have held that body to be electrical. 

Why? First, because the Scriptures of both the 
Old and New Testaments favor that assumption when 

79 



8o LUMINOUS BODIES 

alluding to manifestations of the Divine Personality. 
In Habukuk 3 4 we read : "His brightness was the 
light. He had rays coming forth from His hands. 
Fiery bolts went forth at His feet"; and in Rev. 1 114, 
15, 16, "His eyes were as a flame of fire, and His feet 
like as if they burned in a furnace . . . and His 
countenance as the sun shining in His strength." 

The power of electrical self-illumination is known 
to exist in all departments of the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, and is very largely developed in some in- 
sects and deep sea fishes. If in these lower orders, to 
a degree, why not to fullest intensity in the denizens 
of the Spiritual World, even to a complete investment 
of disembodied souls with luminous envelopes ? 

When Christ was resurrected His body disappeared. 
His disciples and friends thought they saw it after- 
ward in the person of Christ who appeared to them at 
different places, though it was so changed that they 
recognized it with difficulty. This after a lapse of 
only forty-eight hours. He appeared to them to eat, 
and He showed them the healed marks of the nails 
and spear in His body to assure them. But these cav- 
ities could not have healed naturally, except by a 
miracle, and He manifested Himself in this way be- 
cause the disciples could not have recognized His trans- 
formed (body without some such material helps. At 
the same time those who interviewed Him were 
dazzled by His luminosity, were shocked by His elec- 
trical emanations and more or less demoralized by 
phenomena which were not terrestrial. 

My theory as published seems to reconcile and har- 
monize all the various beliefs and speculations ; and 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 81 

on it Pharisees, Sadducees, Greeks and Christian phil- 
osophers and agnostics can all get together and agree. 
St. Paul says that men will not have the same body 
after death. He says they will be changed. How can 
anything be changed and remain the same ? The prin- 
ciple of life is the same; as it is in the grub trans- 
formed to moth and miller, or the seed to the corn 
in the ear; but the envelope (that is, the body) is 
altogether different. What is life? "I am the life"; 
the Holy Spirit. And men made in God's image will 
be "like Him" after death. The body returns to dust, 
and "the spirit to God who gave it." "The angels, are 
they not all ministering spirits?" And man is made 
but little lower than the angels. (Of course, we do 
not select the lowest and most abject types of man- 
kind, or the most degraded persons in a community 
for comparison.) "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
Kingdom of God." 

The philosophy of those who argue for a reformed 
physical body is not comforting or encouraging. Are 
we who are now hampered by mortal clogs to be so 
restricted in the future life that we shall be confined 
to one abiding place as now? and have no chance or 
means to explore the Universe that we may thereby 
acquire that fulness of knowledge which approximates 
to omniscience and become "like Him" in that respect? 
Another attribute of Diety is omnipresence, and man- 
kind makes every effort to imitate or acquire it, risk- 
ing life continually to overcome or annihilate time, 
space and distance. The more we gain in this accom- 
plishment the more we become "like Him" here. In 
the Spiritual World all physical disabilities are re- 



82 LUMINOUS BODIES 

moved. All arguments in favor of a flesh and blood 
body in the future life are in favor of the limitations. 
This is not according to the promise. The promise is 
that the spirit shall be "free." Demarcation and limi- 
tation are not omnipresence. 



XI 

EVOLUTION AND THE FUTURE 
LIFE 



Chapter XL 
EVOLUTION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 

There is no doubt, for "the spirit within us beareth 
witness," that the world in which mortals live is a kin- 
dergarten or primary school from which we shall pro- 
ceed, by metamorphosis not more strange than that 
from worm to ephemera, to a higher life and seat of 
learning. It is a pleasant and encouraging belief, which 
should reconcile us to the inevitable events of death 
and dissolution. Evolution means unfolding, develop- 
ment, progress. Divested of scientific interpretation, 
other than the simple theory of germination, it is a beau- 
tiful study. Angels delight in it ; for they have spoken, 
and their testimony is true. Nevertheless, doubt and 
even utter disbelief in immortality has never been so 
widespread as now, albeit the idea has possessed the 
minds of men ever since the world's history began. 
Dr. Joseph LeConte attributes this defection in great 
part to mental environment; that is, to the spirit of 
the age in which we live, and in one of the issues of 
the And over Review, printed several years ago, gave 
utterance to a marvelous train of thought which, as 
quoted, runs in this wise : 

"Modern science, and especially biology, seems to 
many superficial thinkers to be nothing less than a 
demonstration of a universal materialism. The bio- 

85 



86 LUMINOUS BODIES 

logical objection has two branches, namely, the physio- 
logical branch and the evolution branch. The physio- 
logical branch is drawn from the invariable association 
of mental phenomena with brain-changes ; the mental 
phenomena, moreover, varying both in degree and kind 
with the brain-changes in such wise as apparently to 
show a necessary relation of cause and effect. 'Thus/ 
says the materialist, *we identify mind with matter, and 
mental forces with material forces. Thought, emotion, 
and will become products of the brain in the same 
sense as bile is a product of the liver, or gastric juice 
of the peptic glands/ The evolution branch of the 
objection is derived from the undoubted fact of the 
existence in animals, especially in the higher animals, 
of psychical phenomena similar to those found in man. 
Consciousness, intelligence, will, love, hate, fear, de- 
sire, are plainly exhibited in animals as well as in man. 
The difference is apparently one of degree only and 
not of kind. If, therefore, we accord immortality to 
the psychic nature of man, how can we consistently 
withhold it from the higher animals? But if we ex- 
tend it to these, then we must extend it also to the 
lowest animals ; for the gradation among animals is 
complete and without break. And if to these, then 
also to the vital principle of plants; for the lowest 
animals and plants merge into one another in such wise 
that it is impossible to separate them sharply. Thus 
immortality, if there be any, becomes co-extensive with 
life. But we cannot stop even here, for vital force is 
co-related with, transmutable into, and derivable from, 
physical and chemical forces ; thus our boasted immor- 
tality by continued extension, becomes thinner and thin- 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 87 

ner until it finally evaporates into thin air. It becomes 
naught else than 'conservation of energy/ and not, as 
we hoped, conservation of self-conscious personality. 
Such an immortality will hardly satisfy the longings of 
the human heart. Of what value to us is a continued 
existence in the form of heat, electricity, or some other 
physical force? 

I shall now take up successively these two ob- 
jections, and try to remove them. I wish especi- 
ally to show, contrary to the assertion of many modern 
biologists, that there is betwixt the psychic nature of 
man and that of animals, even in the highest animals, 
a difference not only in degree, but also in kind. Sup- 
pose I remove the skull or brain-cap of one of you 
and expose the brain in a state of intense activity. Sup- 
pose, farther, that my senses were infinitely perfect, so 
that I could see, absolutely, everything going on there. 
What would I see? Evidently, nothing but molecular 
motions, physical and chemical, molecular vibrations or 
agitations, chemical decompositions and recomposi- 
tions. There would be nothing else there to be seen. 
But you, the subject of this experiment, would observe 
nothing of all this. Your observed experiences are 
of a totally different order — namely, consciousness, 
thought, desires, will. Here, then, there are two op- 
posite kinds of phenomena occurring at the same time 
and in the same place, but never both observed by the 
same person, nor by the same kind of senses. By the 
outside believer with his bodily sense are perceived 
only physical phenomena; by the inside observer, with 
his inner or spiritual senses, only psychical phenomena. 

The relation between these two sets of phenomena 



SS LUMINOUS BODIES 

is forever inscrutable. An impression on a nerve-ter- 
minal, a vibratory thrill along the nerve-fiber, a mole- 
cular change of some kind in a brain-cell. This much we 
can understand. But now there suddenly emerges, 
how we know not, nor shall we ever be able to imagine, 
but somehow there emerges, consciousness, thought, 
emotion, will. A brain-cell is agitated and thought ap- 
pears. Aladdin's lamp is rubbed, and the Genie ap- 
pears. There is just as much intelligible relation be- 
tween the two sets of phenomena in the one case as 
in the other. And this, mind you, is not the result of the 
imperfection of our science. To an absolutely perfect 
science the mystery of this relation would be even 
deeper than it is to us, because the two sets of phenom- 
ena would be brought closer together, even in contact, 
and yet their relation still remains wholly unintelligible. 
They are of entirely different orders and cannot be 
construed, the one in terms of the other. Every 
thoughtful materialist frankly admits the absolute im- 
passableness of this chasm. Here, then, we have two 
sets of phenomena of entirely different orders : an out- 
side set and an inside set. Here are two entirely dif- 
ferent worlds : an outer world of sense and an inner 
world of consciousness — a macrocosm and a micro- 
cosm. Now — mark this — one of these, the inner world, 
is entirely peculiar to man. To him alone psychical 
phenomena become objects of observation. In animals 
many of these psychical phenomena are, indeed, pres- 
ent, but are not objects of observation. Animals, cer- 
tainly, have no self-consciousness ; no turning of 
thought inward in observation of self, no inside view 
of brain-phenomena. Is there not here a whole world 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 89 

of phenomena, and that, too, of the highest kind, known 
to man alone ? Man, therefore, and man alone, lives in 
two worlds. Is there not here an enormous difference 
in kind? It is exactly this life in another world — 
namely, the inner world of consciousness — which is the 
distinguishing characteristic of spirit self-conscious- 
ness, self-active, and, as we hope, immortal spirit. 

I assume the truth of evolution, because to the 
philosophical thinker evolution is nothing else than a 
necessary law. It is only an extension of the law of 
continuity, or law of causation, to forms as well as 
phenomena. Phenomena follow one another in unbroken 
succession, each derived from a preceding as its cause, 
and giving origin to a succeeding as its effect. We 
call this the law of causation, and say that it is neces- 
sary, or axiomatic. Its opposite is unthinkable. We 
might call it a law of derivation. So, also, organic 
forms follow one another in unbroken succession, each 
derived by generation from a preceding and giving 
origin to a succeeding. We call this a law of deriva- 
tion. We might well call it a law of causation, and say 
that it also is necessary or axiomatic. Physical phe- 
nomena sometimes occur of which we know not the 
cause; but we never think to doubt that they have a 
natural cause. For so to doubt is to impeach the valid- 
ity of reason and to doubt the rational constitution of 
nature. I assume also the existence of God, whether 
personal or impersonal, it matters not for our argu- 
ment now. I assume, farther, that a divine energy 
pervades all nature, and constitutes what we call the 
forces of nature; and that what we call the laws of 
nature are naught else than the modes of operation of 



90 LUMINOUS BODIES. 

this divine energy. As scientific thinkers, we must 
assume this, because an anthropomorphic deity operat- 
ing on nature from the outside, as on foreign material, 
is incompatible with scientific thought. For science, 
either God is immanent in nature, operating at all times 
and in all places, or else nature operates itself and has 
no use for any God at all. On these assumptions it 
seems to me probable — nay, certain — that a portion of 
this all pervasive divine energy which moves the forces 
of nature individuated itself more and more by process 
of evolution, until it attained complete individuality in 
the spirit of man." 

Van der Naillen does not stop with a single soul 
transmigration. Although the body of the future life 
is to be spiritual, the process of re-embodiment, he 
claims, is to be repeated through all the aeons of eter- 
nity, each spiritual body being succeeded by a more 
brilliant one as the soul progresses through higher in- 
tellectual courses, until finally it becomes fit for alliance 
with the Infinite Being who governs the universe. 

"But," he continues, "never does the soul, even 'thus 
exalted,' become absorbed or lost in the infinitude of 
God." In other words, he claims that the soul retains 
its individuality. 

After describing how the earth and all other planets 
are regulated by the electrical force of the sun, he says : 

"This is the road laid out for the human soul, and 
this road it must pursue sooner or later, for all things 
in existence must follow fatally the lines of force, the 
lines of evolution, leading from the negative pole of 
the material cosmos to the positive pole of the uni- 
versal, the spiritual sun, or center of the pure spirit." 



XII 
CREDO: "ONLY BELIEVE." 



Chapter XII. 

CREDO : "ONLY BELIEVE." 

i. I believe that the Universe is homogeneous in 
its composition, that everything created is composed 
of matter, dominated by a substance or fluid called 
electricity. 

2. I believe that all celestial orbs and planets, being 
homogeneous, and of same material, are as likely to 
be inhabited as the earth is ; because where vegetation 
is, there animals are, and they are all "for the service 
of rnan." 

3. I believe in the corpuscle theory of Sir Oliver 
Lodge, and of the interdependence and reciprocal cor- 
respondence between man and his Maker; and that 
telepathic connection is kept alive by the faculty called 
love. 

4. I believe that "love casteth out fear," and that 
we will deplore to displease Him whom we love ; even 
God. 

5. I believe that a correct walk in life according 
to the promptings of conscience, and the counsels of 
the Scriptures, will be pleasing to our divine affinity, 
whom we are enjoined to call our Heavenly Father: 
and that those who strive to walk right will be re- 
warded according to the promises: and I believe that 
the reward follows promptly in this life, and will be 

03 



94 LUMINOUS BODIES 

extended more abundantly after the death-line is 
crossed, and the spirit has passed "within the veil." 

6. I believe that "death, which guilty men regard 
as the most awful of penalties, is to the upright man 
the sleep which God sends to His beloved when their 
day's work is done." [Canon Farrar.] 

7. I believe that many persons whom prejudiced 
and uncharitable theologians call atheists are nearer 
God than they perhaps are themselves, because they 
are open to conviction on the evidence of facts. 

8. I believe in Christ as a divine messenger es- 
pecially sent to this planet, like the angels before Him, 
Gabriel and Michael, to demonstrate the spiritual af- 
finity which exists between Man and his Maker, in 
whose "image" man is made. 

9. I believe that Heaven is not only a serene mental 
condition resulting from man's own consciousness of 
right ("the spirit within him beareth witness"), but 
also an actual place where the intellect is divested of 
its carnal envelope, and receives a new body which I 
am bold to assume is electrically luminous, effulgent 
with the visible glow of the beatitudes. Lightnings 
are not emblems of God's wrath, though they have 
often been used as its efficacious instruments. They 
are, rather, flashes of the divine effulgence. (See 
Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, St. John.) 

10. I believe that our spiritual bodies will be gifted 
with the faculties of knowledge and locomotion ap- 
proximating to omniscience and omnipresence ; we be- 
ing in this respect "like Him." 

11. I believe that in "that day" (whenever that 
may be) Christ will come "as the lightning shineth 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 95 

from the East to the West," and that the saints will 
be "caught up" as electrical entities to the "place pre- 
pared" for them. 

12. And that finally becoming free from sin, and 
servants to God (following the ethical line of direc- 
tion) we have our fruit unto holiness (right now) and 
the end everlasting life. 

Whoever assents to these tenets need not fear 
death. "As the tree falls, so it will lie." But woe to 
the ungodly, they will be cast forth into the "outer 
darkness" which fills the interstellar space. I believe 
that the ultimate redemption of many of these is pos- 
sible of such that have erred by thoughtlessness, lack 
of capacity, lack of understanding, or lack of oppor- 
tunity. It will be "more tolerable for Sodom and 
Gomorrah than for the defiant, the base, the wilfully 
and incorrigibly depraved." These latter may exist in- 
definitely and unconsciously as "dead wires," so long 
as the electric correspondence is kept shut off between 
them and their maker. Such a condition is equivalent 
to annihilation. 



XIII 
ANTIPHONE: MAN TO HIS MAKER 



Chapter XIII. 
ANTIPHONE: MAN TO HIS MAKER. 

Oh, Lord! our Father! who lovest thine own and 
gives! us abundant daily proof of that dear love in 
constantly enlarging streams of beneficence, inspire 
our hearts to reciprocal love for Thee, so that recog- 
nizing these, thy tokens, we may vie with each other 
in the effort to do what pleaseth Thee; thereby en- 
larging our own happiness each day and hour we live ! 

Thus drawn closer to Thee and sustained by the 
Comforter whom Thou hast sent ; feeling each mo- 
ment the tender pressure of thy sympathetic hand 
wherever we go, we rejoice in the hope that we shall, 
at no distant day, be one with Thee, partaking of thy 
joy and abiding in mansions which it is declared Thou 
has prepared for us ; walking in the way which saints 
departed have learned to walk before us ; feeling that 
our earthly journey onward is but an excursion through 
devious pathways to the land of everlasting beatitudes, 
and that its trials and distresses are but the natural 
incidents which beset all lines of travel ; so that Ave 
may thank Thee at our journey's end that thy kind 
hand has guided us, and thy loving care hast guarded 
us, and thy generous smile sustained us and made us 
glad. 

Oh, our gracious Father! in Thee we trust! The 
hope we have had gives place to the assurance that 
L0F6. w 



ioo LUMINOUS BODIES 

we are indeed heirs and children of the promise, and 
that our inheritance is with the blessed, through the 
atonement and propitiation of thy dear son, Jesus 
Christ, whom Thou hast sent; with whom it is our 
privilege to name Thee Father. 

May we look upon all mankind as brothers for whom 
we should pray and labor, that they too may be inspired 
with love for Thee, and learn to walk in the way ever- 
lasting. And may we feel it a pleasure as our bounden 
duty to bear their soul's interests in mind throughout 
our daily walk; teaching and encouraging by our ex- 
ample at all times, and by injunction when opportunity 
favors, so that we may ourselves continue the Master's 
work which he began on earth, and thereby earn the 
great reward which is promised to those who diligently 
serve Thee. 

Oh, thou omnipotent Creator of all mankind and 
everything existing, and whose laws the universe obeys, 
our times are in thy hands. To Thee we commit our 
souls and bodies, with unwavering confidence in thy 
mercy. Thou hast pardoned our sins which we have 
confessed and greatly bewail. Didst Thou punish in- 
iquity, who could stand? Be with us in the hour of 
death, when our world's work is done, and pass us 
comfortably over the mystical river. Bespeak for us 
a welcome on the father shore where there is fulness 
of joy and delectable communion with spirits of just 
men made perfect. We ask thy favor, whatever may 
betide, in the name of the Saviour who shed His 
precious blood that we might live, to whom, with Thee, 
Oh, Father, and the Holy Ghost be all honor, praise 
and thanksgiving, now and forever. Amen! 



XIV 
APPENDIX: VIEWS AND OPINIONS 



Chapter XIV. 
APPENDIX : VIEWS AND OPINIONS. 

From Two Brother Clergymen. 

"I have read your articles with much interest, finding 
in them much to enjoy and to ruminate upon them, but 
nothing to antagonize. My sister Fanny and her two 
daughters, who have been here for a week, gave good 
attention, and, when I asked their thoughts, coolly said : 
'Much interested, but we do not and cannot give an 
intelligent opinion to-day.' Well, I am glad you are 
studying out those mysteries, which, in the 'sweet bye 
and bye' will be clear to us. Now, 'we see thro' a glass 
darkly.' Wm. A. Hallock, D.D. 

"Jamestown, New York, July 30, 1905." 



"I have read your 'Supreme Source and Its Poten- 
tial Agent,' published in the Wiseman, with interest. 
The electrical potency of the future is fascinating — 
not the less so because elusive. I hope you will follow 
it up in case it opens to you still further, and some 
sweet day you will step over where you will know — 
enriching the other world — while impoverishing this 
one — and becoming yourself luminous and capable of 
that immediate and intimate fellowship which your 
theory implies. "Leavitt H. Hallock, D.D. 

"Plymouth Church, Minneapolis, Minn." 

103 



IQ4 LUMINOUS BODIES 

From a Poet. 

"Your article in the Wiseman is very sunny and full 
cf hope. I am deeply interested in all your advance 
ideas along transcendental lines. It seems to me that 
your article suggesting that the future state of the 
'Body Is Electric' is the biggest gun that you have 
yet fired. The human soul seems to rediscover itself 
from time to time as the ages roll by, and come out into 
the full light, then materialism engulfs it and we plunge 
into darkness again and grope feebly for light. 

"Much of the metaphysical discussion of to-day is 
very old in India. For instance, all the ritual of Chris- 
tian Science was taught in the East ages ago. Emer- 
son, who reached the highest mark in the transcen- 
dental school of the last century, was Brahminical in his 
philosophy. The church is also imbibing some of the 
new ideas, and many pulpits are preaching the more 
vital interpretation of the all-wiseGallilean. 

"Clarence Hawkes, 
"The Blind Poet of New England. 

"Hadley. Mass." 



From a Railroad Official. 

"Hunt and other great philosophers assert that man 
is possessed of an intuitive knowledge, as well as the 
knowledge which necessity has ripened, and that 
theories which can be proved by these degrees of in- 
telligence, are always correct. Since man has been able 
to make known his thoughts, his intuition has caused 
him to think of the Godhead Himself, as well as His 
angels, as clothed in light. Mr. Hallock, possessed in 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 105 

a large degree of this quality of intuition, has added 
to it a great scientific knowledge, and his hypothesis is 
thus based on a logical footing which commands respect 
and is not easy to refute. If, therefore, this last work 
of his was his only one, it is sufficient to command our 
respect for a nature which has a faith like that of a 
little child and an education in the workings of God's 
wondrous ways which only a lifetime of close com- 
munion with his works could impart. If the soul has 
an individuality after death, certainly there is no known 
substance, if it can be termed so, so suitable to the im- 
agination to conceive for external housing of the soul 
as the magical substance which is the servant of the 
Creator in all His finest and most powerful creations. 
He uses it to light and heat the universe, to give life 
to all things, and to carry away the spirit soul from the 
body in which it was incased. Why should the soul 
discard this servant which has been loaned to it for 
all its undertakings? 

"Certainly the conception was grand whenever ap- 
plied, and Mr. Hallock's handling of the subject, while 
performed with that reverence which is natural to such 
an undertaking by one who has lived so long in the 
Light of Faith and Understanding, is still marked by 
the stamp of Genius and true insight into the workings 
of Divine goodness to mankind. "E. Hickson. 

"Intercolonial R. R., Moncton, N. B., Canada." 



From a Noted Physician. 

"Of a verity, the thesis The Supreme Source and 
Its Potential Agent' stamps its author, Mr. Charles 



106 LUMINOUS BODIES 

Hallock, as a daring, advanced, original, ingenious, 
plausible and convincing thinker with a clarity as wide 
as the earth itself, and a disposition to meet the estab- 
lished order of things orthodox more than half of the 
way. Whatever individual or aggregation of individu- 
als undertakes to disprove the reasonable, alluring and 
convincing propositions of the author has surely grap- 
pled with the most difficult proposition liable to present 
itself in an aeon of time. Dr. A. J. Woodcock. 

"Bryon, III." 



A Letter From a College Professor. 

"To the Editor of the Open Court: 

"I have read with great interest the article by Mr. 
Hallock, on 'The Body of the Future : Is It Electrical ?' 
and also the editorial comments, in the November issue 
of The Open Court. Permit me to ask why Mr. Hal- 
lock's theory in its main features may not be eminently 
reasonable, if the new view of the electrical nature of 
matter be true? 

"Authorities in physics like Sir Oliver Lodge and 
Professor Fison, and others equally as eminent, have 
said within a few months that the 'so-called atom,' 
which has played such an important part in modern 
science, 'is now displaced from its fundamental place 
of indivisibility.' It has been divided and shown to be 
composed of electricity. Very recent investigations 
point to the conclusion, which these scientists are an- 
nouncing as true, that 'the fundamental ingredient of 
which . . . the whole matter is made up, is noth- 
ing more nor less than electricity, in the form of an 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 107 

equal number of positive and negative charges.' This 
is the doctrine toward which the best modern scientific 
research surely points. It will be at once seen that it 
secures that 'unification of matter such as has through 
all Ifoe ages been sought ; it goes much further than 
had been hoped, for the substratum is not an unknown 
and hypothetical protyle, but the familiar electric 
charge.' 

"If, as these authorities in physics are beginning to 
say, the essence of matter is electricity, why may not 
Mr. Hallock's main position, that there will be a future 
body and that it will be electrical, be reasonable? The 
electrical nature of matter is likely to lead to a radical 
change in some modern scientific views, and among 
them the conception of death and the existence of the 
body after death. 

"My main point is this : On the supposition that the 
New Testament statements about a body after death, 
(or the resurrection body, are true, why may not the 
electrical theory of the nature of matter give us some 
idea of the nature of that body and make credible some 
passages in the New Testament that have hitherto been 
regarded as inconsistent with what has been supposed 
to be true of matter? 

"It is announced that experiments conducted very 
lately in England show that one form of matter, one 
so-called original element, has been actually changed 
into another element. Some very eminent scientists, 
it is reported, declare that they have accomplished this 
result. This would be in harmony with the electrical 
nature of matter and would also have an important 
bearing on the subject under consideration. 



108 LUMINOUS BODIES 

"It seems to me that recent discoveries in physics 
require us to develop a very different philosophy from 
that formulated years ago under erroneous ideas of the 
nature of matter. Not a little dogmatic science of 
other days will have to be abandoned, it seems to me. 

H. L. Stetson. 

"Kalamazoo, Mich." 



From an Astronomer. 

Mr. Hallock received the following interesting com- 
munication from Prof. Edgar L. Larkin, Director of 
the Lowe Observatory, California, a man "who con- 
stantly looks heavenward" : 

"Dear Sir: — I read your article with interest. I have 
been writing for months in the papers that nothing 
exists but electricity. It is a matter and may assume 
protean forms. Of course our spiritual bodies are 
merely one phase of electricity, souls, minds, spirit also 
— every entity in existence. Thousands of verses not 
only in the Hebrew, but in many other Oriental script* 
ures, are cleared up by this cardinal fact. Many mys- 
tical facts in 'spiritualism' are also explained by elec- 
trical hypothesis. I allude to 'refined' matter in my 
book 'Radiant Energy." "Edgar L. Larkin." 



A Reviewer's Comment. 

"It is true that ail the facts of physics go far to sug- 
gest (perhaps even to support) the theory that mat- 
ter is condensed ether, and we may add, it is quite also 
probable that electricity, which, barring light, is the 



HERE AND HEREAFTER. 109 

most important phenomenon of ether in motion known 
to us, will be found to play a more important part in 
nature than could be anticipated in former times. But 
all these theories are far from substantiating the as- 
sumption that the body of the resurrection is electrical, 
or, to go further still, that there is any body of resur- 
rection at all in the sense of traditional religious con- 
ceptions. On the contrary, if these theories concerning 
matter and ether be true, it would only indicate that 
our present world-system built up of atoms might 
finally be dissolved again into its primordial ether. The 
atom has so far resisted analysis, and it is likely that 
all the methods at the disposal of scientists will fail 
to resolve it, but if the atom be a compound we may 
be sure in the long run of world cycles it will finally 
be dissolved again into its elements. All compound 
bodies within the reach of our experience, even the 
eternal rocks, so called, break up into their ingredients, 
and there is no reason to doubt the universality of the 
law (so energetically enunciated in Buddhist meta- 
physics), that all compounds are subject to disintegra- 
tion. 

"Professor Dubois-Reymond proved that electrical 
phenomena play some important part in muscle-activ- 
ity, and Professor Augustus Waller, of London, has 
brought to light further interesting facts. He proves 
that electric fluctuations take place so long as a sub- 
stance (be it animal or vegetable) is still alive, and 
the absence of electricity indicates absence of vitality. 
But all this does not prove that electricity alone with- 
out any bodily substratum may constitute a person, that 
such a person after death should retain the shape of the 



no LUMINOUS BODIES 

material body, and that his electrical body should float 
about after the manner of the ghosts of folk-lore. 

"Mr. Hallock succeeded in proving the presence of 
folk-lore in the Bible, but no amount of Biblical quota- 
tions will prove that the folk-lore view is tenable before 
the tribunal of science. 

"I will not venture here to state the reasons that 
prevent me from accepting the theory of an electrical 
body of resurrection, for that would lead me too far 
and it is difficult to say why a thing is not. I will 
limit myself only to the positive statement that the 
monistic drift of modern science, especially, our re- 
vised notions of ether and electricity, contain not the 
slightest argument in favor of proving that the soul 
should be possessed of an electrical resurrection-body. 
We might as well assume that a dynamo which has 
been built to change molar motion into electricity 
would, if broken to pieces, continue as a purely ethereal 
dynamo, and that it would thus form a superior kind 
of machine, a maakheru dynamo. 

"The theory of a transfigured body, maakheru as the 
Egyptians called it, is so natural a fabrication of human 
fancy, that it originated among all nationalities. 

"Dr. Paul Carus. 

"Editor of Open Court. 

"La Salle, III./' 1903. 



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